Senegal: Villages Deserted for Dreams in Europe

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For years now, Senegal has been regarded as one of the more successful countries in Africa. It has a democratically elected president and state institutions that function properly.

Nonetheless thousands of Senegalese, notably the youth, are trying to leave their country for Europe in search of greener pastures.

Goudiry — Slumped on a bench in a village in southeast Senegal – which is lifeless but for the occasional bleating of goats and splutter of old motorcycles – Aliou Thiam has only one thing on his mind.

The 28-year-old is preparing to leave behind his wife, two children and the only life he has known in the pursuit of a goal shared by many young men across Senegal: reaching Europe.

Senegalese refugees awaiting deportation in Morocco

Senegalese refugees awaiting deportation in Morocco

“I don’t have anything here. That is why I want to go, why I need to go,” he said, glancing at several men lying nearby in the shade, snoozing through the still, sweltering afternoon.

“The only thing we know is migration,” Thiam told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Migration equals success.”

Thousands of Senegalese men set off for Europe each year, risking their lives on treacherous journeys through the Sahara desert and across the Mediterranean sea. Most fail. Many die.

Senegal is among the top 10 countries of origin for migrants arriving in Italy this year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says, along with countries like Eritrea, Mali and Nigeria, beset by conflict or concerns over rights abuses.

But Senegal’s young men are not fleeing war. Deemed economic migrants, they are seeking a better life for themselves and their families, and see Europe as the only gateway to success.

It is a belief entrenched over decades as generations of Senegalese moved to Europe – in particular to France, the former colonial master – and sent money home.

But more and more young men are now trying their luck with discontent over joblessness and the slow pace of development simmering in the West African nation.

rescued-immigrants

Rescued migrants

Despite being one of Africa’s most stable and fastest-growing democracies, Senegal’s average monthly income is less than $100, and around one in eight people are unemployed.

The surge in migrants has sparked debate globally about whether economic migrants should be treated differently to refugees fleeing conflict, and fuelled fears poverty will worsen and national stability come under threat if remittances dry up.

Uneducated, untrained and unemployed, Thiam and his peers in southeastern Tambacounda, one of Senegal’s poorest regions, say they have been abandoned by the government – citing undeveloped land, few jobs, and a lack of vocational training schemes.

“All over Senegal, but especially outside of Dakar, there is a view that you can’t make it here, but can make it in Europe,” said Jo-Lind Roberts, chief of mission for the IOM in Senegal.

“There is a lack of hope about life in Senegal.”

NO JOBS, NO FUTURE

Tambacounda is one of Senegal’s main points of departure for the thousands of young men who have headed for Europe via Libya since the North African country’s 2011 uprising led to a vacuum of state authority.

Two-thirds of Tambacounda’s population of 700,000 live in poverty, compared to less than half on average across the nation of 15 million, according to data from Senegal’s 2013 census.

One in three people in Tambacounda, where the average age is 20, have no job to go to.

“All these young people are lying around doing nothing,” said El Hadji Sao, secretary general of Goudiry, one of Tambacounda’s four departments. “It is enough to cause revolt.”

In the heart of Goudiry, young men work tirelessly in wooden shacks, repairing motorbikes, welding steel and sewing clothes.

Yet very few jobs exist outside of the centre of Goudiry, with vast expanses of arid, unused land interrupted only by withered baobab trees and isolated villages.

Though many young men in the Senegalese capital Dakar dream of emigrating to Europe, Cheikh Oumar (not his real name) – has gone a step further. He has already tried to make that giant leap – and has failed. He is in his early 30s, an educated young man who studied literature at Cheikh Anta Diop University. He explained why he tried to leave Senegal.

“I was unemployed. I’d had no job for six months. My only option was to go somewhere else.”

A friend had told Oumar that he could get to Morocco for 150,000 CFA francs (225 euros) and he decided it was worth a try.

“First I went by car to Rosso in Mauritania. Then we headed off to Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital. At 9 a.m the next morning, we went to the Western Sahara border and then through the international buffer zone and on to Morocco,” he explained. Oumar stayed in Morocco for about a year, until the Moroccan authorities deported him.

Anger at African governments

Back in Senegal, he can barely conceal his anger at African governments and leaders.

“Young people see no future here, that’s why they want to go to Europe,” he says. Two thirds of the Senegalese population is under the age of 18. That population is also growing in size and so, too, is the number of new entrants on the job market.

According to the head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Senegal, Jo-Lind Roberts-Sene, among the refugees who made the dangerous trip to the Italian coast between January and March of this year were 1,200 Senegalese.

“They are mostly young men from rural areas and the suburbs where economic prospects are not very good. They often have little in the way of formal education,” Roberts-Sene told DW.

These young refugees are looking for jobs. They want to get ahead in life and support their families. But they are ill-prepared for the difficulties that await them.

“They don’t really understand what it means to live in Europe as an illegal immigrant and what the consequences are. They simply believe that on arrival they will be able to find a job and send lots of money back home,” Roberts-Sene said.

Senegalese rapper Gunman Xuman uses his music to campaign against illegal migration. He is critical of the European Union.

“The reason why people are still attempting to cross the Mediterranean – and die while doing so – is connected to Europe’s hypocrisy in its dealings with Africa. They close the borders and make it increasingly difficult to obtain visas,” said Xuman.

But Xuman believes the conduct of African governments also deserves censure. Africa’s best brains are leaving for Europe and African governments do nothing, although the onus should be on them to take action.

“You have got to offer the young people opportunities so that they lose interest in leaving the continent,” he said.

But besides the lack of perspectives and information, there is another reason that drives many young people into migration. Their general perception is that whoever makes it Europe becomes successful. Jo-Lind Roberts Sene knows a lot of illegal migrants who are doing miserably in Europe, but who give friends and family back home the impression they are living a luxurious life.

Deportation in Italy

In Italy is another young Senegalese from a well to-do family who prefers to remain anonymous but we will call him Seyni. Seyni chose a less risky route to Europe. He came to Italy with a tourist visa but decided to go into hiding after his visa expired. “I wanted to be a basketball player and decided to try my luck in Europe,” he said.

But his basketball venture didn’t progress so he chose to live illegally, as a “clandestino”, near Milan doing odd jobs, hoping to be discovered by a talent scout. Later he married an Italian woman for love. He was not far away from the long-awaited residence permit. But the marriage failed and fear once again engulfed him.

After filing numerous applications over several years Seyni now is in a detention center not far from Rome International Airport waiting to be deported back to Senegal. What about migrants who want to return to their home country, but who are in straitened circumstances? The International Organization for Migration has a program to help them.

Since January 2015, 51 Senegalese have expressed their wish to return home and 400 Senegalese have been returned home from Libya.

“Their flight is paid for and they are given assistance in finding their feet once again. For example, we will help them financially to get started in poultry or cattle breeding, or to open a shop or take an adult education course,” said Jo-Lind Roberts-Sene.

Seyni is still thinking about what kind of job he should take up after more than a decade living as a clandestino in Italy. But he is happy to be back home. “I’ve had enough and Italy was no good,” he concludes.

Moustafa Diouf

After being repatriated to Senegal on a Spanish military plane having risked his life on a perilous sea crossing to the Canary Islands in 2006, Moustafa Diouf founded an association to warn young Africans of the dangers of illegal migration to Europe.

Last week, the secretary-general of his group gave up and took a bus to Morocco from where traffickers smuggled him to Spain aboard a fishing vessel. He was fed up at working without pay because donors did not provide the support they hoped for.

Now, Diouf, undeterred by the latest drownings of up to 900 migrants who were trying to reach Europe, is so desperate he is ready to do the same.

“I’m not afraid to die. I’m ready to leave. I cannot just stay here with my arms crossed,” he said, on the beach at Thiaroye-sur-Mer, a ramshackle village outside Senegal’s capital Dakar, where brightly painted fishing boats line the shore.

For around 500,000 CFA francs ($823), traffickers will take you to Libya and across the sea to Italy, Diouf said: “Everyone here is looking for someone who is leaving.”

Diouf, like many others, sees Europe as a place to find a job and a better life. As the peak summer migration season gets underway, thousands of African migrants are headed for north Africa to make the crossing. Chaos in Libya, following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, has allowed traffickers to thrive.

Between January and March, nearly 1,200 Senegalese arrived in Italy by sea – up a quarter from the same period last year and the second-highest nationality behind neighboring Gambia, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

A surge of migrants into Italy in April sparked fears that their numbers this year could top the record 170,000 people who crossed by sea in 2014 — nearly half of them from war-torn Syria and the repressive east African state of Eritrea.

By contrast, Senegal is West Africa’s most stable democracy but would-be migrants here say they are desperate to escape poverty. Income per head in the country of 14 million averages just over $1,000 a year. Youth unemployment is rampant in a country where half the population is under 18.

Shocked by the death of some 1,800 migrants this year in the Mediterranean, European leaders agreed on Thursday to triple funding to its Operation Triton search mission off the Italian coast to 120 million euros.

But, for Diouf what is needed are jobs at home. He said Europe had not kept promises to invest in fishing and training in Senegal to help young people find work: on the contrary, European trawlers plunder Senegalese waters, making life harder for local fisherman.

“The government and the European Union must accept their responsibilities because we cannot live here without anything at all,” Diouf said. “We cannot stop illegal immigration altogether but we could decrease it.”

FAMILIES ENCOURAGE MIGRANTS

Senegal has a long tradition of emigration. With an estimated 500,000 Senegalese overseas, many families rely on income from a relative abroad. Remittances totaled around $1.7 billion in 2013 — more than a tenth of economic output.

“Some families encourage their children to make the crossing by sending them money once they get to Libya,” said Souleymane Jules Diop, Minister of Senegalese Overseas, told Reuters. “That’s the reality and the state cannot stop it.”

President Macky Sall’s government has called on European nations to accept more legal migration from Africa. It has also pledged to tackle the traffickers making millions from illegal routes crossing the continent.

A crackdown by EU border agency Frontex and a repatriation deal by the Senegalese government effectively shut the 1,300-km migration route to the Canary Islands that Diouf took.

Now migrants leave by bus to Morocco from Dakar’s Pikine neighborhood, locals say. Otherwise, they travel to the Malian capital Bamako and head north to the desert town of Gao or Agadez in neighboring Niger where smugglers ferry them across the Sahara, often in open-topped trucks.

The route passes under the nose of a 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, where Islamist militants prowl the desert. Along the way migrants fees to transporters, traffickers and bribes to police not to send them home, said Julien Brachet, a specialist on migration at the Paris based IRD think-tank.

“It is not the poorest people who leave, you need to have social and economic resources,” Brachet said. “Economic reasons are frequently cited by migrants, because that is socially acceptable, but it is not necessarily the main reason.”

On the beach of Thiaroye, locals voice grief for those who have died in the Mediterranean in recent days — some of them from Senegal. To many, it is a reminder of friends and relatives lost trying to reach Europe.

“Before I wanted to leave but my parents would not let me. My three cousins left and they all died,” said Doudou Faye, 42, a father of four, as he mended his fishing boat. “I saw the other day that 700 people died. Now I am too afraid to go.”

About the Author

Michael Onas
Africa - Online Founder & Senior Editor Africa - Online.Com was founded by Michael Onas in 1997, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in African news sector, with millions of readers around the world and followers on social media.